Like mortarboard tassels on graduation day, the Wheel of Time has come ’round to Teaser Tuesday.

Just in case you don’t know, Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by Books and a Beat. Anyone can play along! All you have to do is grab the book you’re currently reading, open to a random page and share a few sentences from that page. But make sure you don’t share any spoilers!*

*I wish I could take credit for this introduction, but I shamelessly stole it from Heather over at bitsnbooks. To help me make amends, you should go check out her blog.

This week I’m reading The Martian by Andy Weir. I wanted to read this book when I first heard about it on Science Friday (before it was a movie, I think/hope). As I was recently given a gift card to a local bookstore, I decided to pick up a personal copy based on positive reviews from friends whose literary judgment I find trustworthy.

The Goodreads Blurb:

Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars.

Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there.

After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.

Chances are, though, he won’t have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old “human error” are much more likely to kill him first.

The time has come (ominous musical crescendo) for some missions!
NASA gets to name their missions after gods and stuff, so why can't I? Henceforth, rover experimental missions will be "Sirius" missions. Get it? Dogs?

In Retrospect:

“The <i>Essex</i> disaster is not a tale of adventure. It is a tragedy that happens to be one of the greatest true stories ever told.”

The true story that inspired <i>Moby Dick</i>, <i>In the Heart of the Sea</i> is entertaining, intriguing, and horrifying (in a rubbernecking-at-a-bad-accident kind of way). It’s <i>Life of Pi</i> without the symbolism and <i>Moby Dick</i> without all those chapters about knots.

A must-read for anyone interested in whaling history, American history, or survival tales.